Another esports cdrama! The last one was a solid good hit, The King’s Avatar, with Yang Yang as the main character. Falling Into Your Smile (你微笑时很美) is adapted from the novel written by Qing Mei starring Xu Kai and Cheng Xiao as the main leads. She plays a simple girl who turns to gaming for her (ex) boyfriend. Alas, they were not meant to be. Naturally good at gaming, she is invited to be the first female teammate in a famous e-sports team. And that is where she meets our witty male lead who has a poisonous tongue; who is also the team leader. Ha! Their love grows slowly as they train, interact, and live under the same roof as a team with other players.
17 thoughts on “Falling Into Your Smile with Xu Kai and Cheng Xiao releases first stills of young esports players”
I actually did read and liked the novel….because FL was genuinely strong in the game and all. But it was a very long….novel so I gave up when leads become a couple lol. But I loved Kings avatar and hopefully they make something solid with the drama. Esp since I quite like Xukai in his roles.
17 thoughts on “Falling Into Your Smile with Xu Kai and Cheng Xiao releases first stills of young esports players”
Ooh, keeping this on my “check it out” list.
I haven’t watched King’s Avatar but I did quite like Gank Your Heart also from last year. My only Xu Kai drama was The Legends, which I did not finish (halfway through I was more invested in Qin Qianxian and Lu Shiqi than the leads lol) but I liked him in that.
17 thoughts on “Falling Into Your Smile with Xu Kai and Cheng Xiao releases first stills of young esports players”
I love esports as a genre, King’s avatar’s source novel is as strong/well known as they come, and I think it did a decent job at it, while swerving too hard to for dramatic tension reason making some unwise/illogical adaptation choices. It’d be more similar to Gank Your Heart though since this will have romance.
Falling Into Your Smile’s issue is the source novel is full of plagiarism, of real people, real events and real gags/gimmicks/memes.It’s totally fine to have inspiration and have easter eggs/homages, but this book is literally MOST OF IT. Its title, male lead’s game id, personality, background, skills are mix of various players, very noticeable ones. Basically majority of matches are REAL playback of actual matches (so the meat of it is good because THOSE WERE REAL). The author refuse to admit she had any kind of bases, insisted that she created everything and there was some fandom drama about her fighting with esport fans and accusing a particular team’s fan for stealing a phrase she was certain that was taken from her book (it wasn’t) amongst other things, the esport community is not happy about it. There’s other criticisms about it, including professionalism of its main characters and how sue-ish otp is, but I never read it due to plagiarism concern so I guess your mileage may vary. Mostly mentioning it here (and may be again when it airs if I remember it) as a heads up.
I KNOW it’s one of the more well known esport novels, but there are still other decent ones they could have adapted. This issue is NOT SMALL, it was known when it was still serialising, it made a splash when they sold the ip, when they were filming, and I’m sure when it airs. I really really wish production companies would stop producing dramas or movies based on problematic sources like this. I’m not particularly hopeful the adaptation will be great either, since it has to be friendly to non-gamers but exciting enough for gamers (or at least passable enough so people don’t pick on all of your faults, good luck with that)
17 thoughts on “Falling Into Your Smile with Xu Kai and Cheng Xiao releases first stills of young esports players”
Thanks for your insight on this. Didn’t know this was heavily plagiarized but now it’s making me less interested in watching it. Speaking of gaming media, did you ever read the second novel to Gank Your Heart/电竞恋人?I think that’s the one with Pei Xi as the main lead. Are there any esports novels that you recommend that is similar to GYH as in, gaming and romance?
17 thoughts on “Falling Into Your Smile with Xu Kai and Cheng Xiao releases first stills of young esports players”
Oof I looked more into it since they wrapped up filming and esport community was pretty mad about it. It looks like the narrative doesn’t particularly respect esport or its community much, it names real people and real teams, and make questionable remarks about them, as well as use particular rumours/gossips to extrapolate regarding professionalism of certain ex or current players. (e.g. Some people might have messy private lives, but that’s not reason to write in your novel “protag stumble into this guy sleeping with his fans, so he made protag not to tell, and promised to lose the match” WHAT THE FLYING FUCK. also I didn’t know they named Faker (literally no.1 in LOL, the person with most achievements, an astoundingly gifted and hard working player, well respected around the world) and wrote him to be a villain, a villain that’s selfish and doesn’t care about teammates etc, lots of false characterisation that made people really mad. whyyyyyyy.
I did read the second novel! 绝佳拍档 is on 微信读书, so I read it that way, since it was never serialised online. I liked it little less thank Gank Your Heart to be honest. It’s about a made up group shooting game (fps are not my thing), but its focus is largely on struggles of being female professional esport player. It’s defnitely very rough and she runs into lots of troubles, and her team are made up of players that have one issue or another, but they all struggle and grow and overcome it together. My issue with it, besides the depressingly real sexist environment and bs protag has to deal with, just so she can prove herself, is that due to doubts about female players, the club enforce a strict no romance between the players, SO the otp don’t really go out till the end. They are still cute and have sweet interactions, but it’s frustrating, and I guess I’m not as big on genius stoic male lead/hardworking genki female lead, since it’s used pretty often. Don’t get me wrong, it’s pretty well written, and I love the protag, but I just like this book comparatively less.
As for other novels, I’m only read a handful, a lot of them tend to be romance heavy and gaming is a background thing and that’s not really what I want. I think my favourite were 你和人头都归我[电竞] by 酱子贝, very classic power couple, and 再让我睡一会[电竞] by 弥欣. I don’t play MoBA but I play games & watched LoL matches after watching Gank Your Heart, so if the gaming bits is too ??? skip them I guess? 打野来给我当狗[电竞] by 月离争 explain the game pretty darn well, but it’s like 90% of gaming, and the romance is like almost non-existent. Oh Gu Man’s 你是我的荣耀 might sort of count? but gaming is more like a starting point, I liked the characterisation of the otp though (more than other Gu Man novels I’ve read :P)
I actually like MMO novels more because I like guild interactions/making friends online bit but people have mostly stopped writing them. My favourite is very heavy on gaming and light on romance (male lead appears in chapter 80 iirc….LOL) and also SO DAMN LONG 猎者天下 by 那时烟火. I think the rest are okay on gaming + romance balance, 网游之有间黑店 by二谦 (a liiittle sue-ish but protag is fun) and 盛世烟火 by 夜凰 (extremely badass protag) both are on the longer side cos they were serialised on qidian. Then for bit shorter we have 网游之另类女神 by 无聊到底 (the male lead is hilarious and the guild are full of weirdoes) and 网游之另类双神 by 倾风抚竹 (otp are fans of each other but their in game guilds are enemies LMAO) share the same mmo setup cos the authors are friends, they have other mmo novels too that are decent. 人妖爱上妖人 by 三水小草 is fairly down to earth. 每天都被师父投喂 by 时久 has gaming as background, food is the bigger draw, reading it made me really hungry. She has another well known novel that’s been sitting in my backlog since forever. 花妖新娘 by 墨青城 actually uses fair amount of old tropes but it was really effective on me. 老板,该发工资了[全息] by 板栗子 was very adorable and I liked the setting (near-future with some usage of AIs), enough that I read whole bunch of her novels, and found I still liked this one the best XD
17 thoughts on “Falling Into Your Smile with Xu Kai and Cheng Xiao releases first stills of young esports players”
If you don’t mind bl, should read AWM绝地求生! I really liked it (also the radiodrama is amazeballs). I personally think it’s a good balance between gaming and romance, but the game played here is PUBG, so it’s more first person shooter.
If your more into bg gaming novels, one I thought was pretty good but didn’t finish (just put on a hold for a long while) is 大神已掉线. Not sure about the romance aspect bc I haven’t even gotten to the romance, but seems really gaming heavy, which seems up your alley?
17 thoughts on “Falling Into Your Smile with Xu Kai and Cheng Xiao releases first stills of young esports players”
Oh at one point i was on an esports reading blitz….i think i missed these. Tq for the recommendations.
Also wow…didnt know about the plagiarism thing. It was just a random read based on some netizen recommendation 😱
17 thoughts on “Falling Into Your Smile with Xu Kai and Cheng Xiao releases first stills of young esports players”
Thanks for the recs! It’s too bad the source novel for Falling is full of problems. It just sounds like a fanfic being brought to the small screen. I’m sure the producers have had to know about the problems and the fact that they still adapted it just doesn’t sit well with me.
I have yet to start on GYH’s source novel so its sister story will have to wait, but at least you said it was well-written! Will check out the others that you listed. Ah, I love 板栗子 novels but that 老板,该发工资了 is one that I have not started. She has so many, haha.
17 thoughts on “Falling Into Your Smile with Xu Kai and Cheng Xiao releases first stills of young esports players”
this sounds like the drama behind Princess wei young with tang yan!!
these producers don’t care, they read about hyped up novels and just bought the rights, sometimes they dont even read the novels and hence most drama adaptations suck balls.
sigh. i like xu kai, so was hoping this is a good drama for him. so many plagiarism these days.
17 thoughts on “Falling Into Your Smile with Xu Kai and Cheng Xiao releases first stills of young esports players”
Thank you for the information, skibbies!
I really liked King’s Avatar so I was planning to check this out but now I’ve lost all interest in this. Plagiarism is a huge NO-NO in my book and the fact that it slanders real people is even worse!
Gank Your Heart had too much romance and not enough gaming stuff…
17 thoughts on “Falling Into Your Smile with Xu Kai and Cheng Xiao releases first stills of young esports players”
@Julianne oh yeah I’ve heard of AMW! I’m not sure I’ll understand PUBG mhmm, but I also have a few overwatch novels stacked somewhere. I rarely read BL novels for some reason, I think I just like rooting for female leads, but GL is too niche lol. Never heard of 大神已掉线, thanks for the rec!
@Maymay: yeah it’s fairly popular novel so it gets recc’ed a lot, I think I found out from weibo. what did you read that you’d rec? 😮
@Judith: omg princess wei young was a nightmare, over 100+ novels plagiarised, single digit chapters without any plagiarism and it got a drama and had decent tv ratings. I’m glad the writers band together to sue the source novel, even if the process was long and grueling and the compensation was minuscule.
@anon: GYH’s novel was bit better on the gaming front, the drama had some original content and fleshed out more supporting characters, so there was comparatively less gaming stuff. It also function as introduction to non-gamers which worked okay I think. I don’t think dramas will ever have as much gaming as novels just due to audience reason (even King’s Avatar only has like 30% of actual gaming), but more dramas that take esport seriously would be nice. King’s Avatar, GYH and Go Go Squid all had cameos by esport players and cooperations from some clubs, so at least I know they care.
17 thoughts on “Falling Into Your Smile with Xu Kai and Cheng Xiao releases first stills of young esports players”
@skibbies. I read Gu Man’s first I think..then I look up for recommendations…sometimes on toutiao some authors post their recs according to genre. Sometimes on douban also they reccommend similar genre novels. Sometimes I just google and some authors have a long list lmao. It was a few years back so I can’t recall which led me to this one lol.
17 thoughts on “Falling Into Your Smile with Xu Kai and Cheng Xiao releases first stills of young esports players”
Thanks skibbies! I agree with you. I understand that dramas need to appeal to general audiences too so it’s understandable that they try to flesh out characters and romance and relationships, etc.
The most important thing is that they should respect esports and the community and not just trash all over it. I love novels but sometimes it’s hard to imagine the more complicated gaming sequences, so it’s nice to see the esports scenes in action, which makes dramas appealing.
It’s nice to know that the King’s Avatar, Gank Your Heart, and Go Go Squid had input from the esports community! I haven’t read the GYH or GG Squid novels but I did read King’s Avatar and watched the drama (which had awesome CGI and the story was good).
17 thoughts on “Falling Into Your Smile with Xu Kai and Cheng Xiao releases first stills of young esports players”
Princess Wei Yang’s author became a scriptwriter for Yang Xi’s Palace(?) I came across the post in as second, third… hand information so I’m not sure it’s true. When people found out this, some vowed to boycott Yang Xi. As it became more and more popular, many of those who vowed to boycott relented because everyone they knew was watching it and they didn’t want to be left out.
The concept of intellectual property rights is still pretty weak in China, especially among middle-aged and older people. An average 40+ female viewer doesn’t care whether a drama was based on plagiarized source, she only cares about having an entertaining diversion.
17 thoughts on “Falling Into Your Smile with Xu Kai and Cheng Xiao releases first stills of young esports players”
haaa that’s a rumour I believe? It’s credited to Zhou Mo, a pen name that some suspect might be group of writers, I saw a rumour core writer was a Master student at the time. Yu Zheng is known to have plagiarised, but if wei young’s author could write an original story, wei young wouldn’t have happened LOL. I’ve never watched Yanxi or read Weiyoung though, so who knows.
Yeah you are right, and fair amount of young viewers might make exceptions for their favourites or just not care. But it’s getting there, plaigarism will draw some level of boycott now and definitely some roasting online. The creative environment can seem like nightmare mode though.
17 thoughts on “Falling Into Your Smile with Xu Kai and Cheng Xiao releases first stills of young esports players”
Thanks for the heads up skibbies! I didn’t watch or read anything epsorts-related materials so am clueless. Now I feel icky. Sigh.
17 thoughts on “Falling Into Your Smile with Xu Kai and Cheng Xiao releases first stills of young esports players”
Yay for xu kai. Hopefully, there’s a lot of romance scenes. Just like go go squid and love o2o. Im in the mood of romance dramas.
Ah xu kai is so handsome 😍😍😍